


The Curse in a Dead Man's Eye

by Verecunda



Category: The Fog (1980)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25791874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verecunda/pseuds/Verecunda
Summary: All towns by the sea have their legends. Returning to Antonio Bay twenty years after the fog came, Andy discovers that some legends die harder than others.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 3
Collections: Limited Theatrical Release 2020





	The Curse in a Dead Man's Eye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StopTalkingAtMe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/gifts).



> You had so many great prompts for this film, but what really caught me was what you said about the quiet, atmospheric spooky moments. Those are also my favourite parts, so I hope this is a suitably moody sort of epilogue to the story.

Jesus, thought Andy as he drove into the centre of town, let’s do the time warp again. 

Some places really didn’t change. It was a long time since he’d last seen Antonio Bay — sixteen, seventeen years? — but driving down Broad Street made him feel like he’d accidentally taken a left turn back into his childhood. Some of the shop signs had changed, and every so often some odd little detail would catch at his subconscious as _not how it had been_ , but on the whole, the place was pretty much exactly the same as he remembered it. The houses were the same, with their quaint white-painted timbered fronts, and even the harbour didn’t look to have changed, crowded with pretty much the same fishing boats and trawlers that he remembered from when he was a kid: all rusty streaks and blistered paintwork, boats which to the landsman’s eye looked just about ready to fall apart, but which were actually solid as granite, their moods and quirks known by heart to their skippers. Some of them were hanging about the quayside — solid, weatherbeaten guys in check shirts, oilies and seaboots — and he wasn’t convinced they weren’t the exact same men he’d seen out the car window the day he and his mom had left.

He wasn’t sure whether he felt relieved or disturbed by that.

He parked the car as close to the seafront as he could, opposite the line of shops that faced straight out onto the bay. As he got out, he was immediately hit by the cackling of gulls and the clear, salt-laced air, which at once pinged off about a thousand half-buried memories. The tide was out, and below the harbour wall the rocky shore was banded with tangled black sea-wrack, which sent out its thick smell of old salt and rotting weed. Not a pleasant smell, but a weirdly evocative one, as much a part of Antonio Bay’s seafront as the shops and fishing boats and stacked lobster pots, or even Trent’s ice cream place overlooking the water. (Still open. God, what age must Mr. Trent be now? He’d always seemed pretty geriatric even when Andy was ten.)

He crossed the sidewalk to the railing that ran along the harbour wall and spent a long time just leaning on it and looking about, absorbing the sights and sounds and the rhythm of the place, letting it sink into him, stir up memories. Lots of those, good and bad.

“Why?” That was what his mom had asked, when he’d told her about coming down here. And he hadn’t been able to come up with much of an answer. He’d been sad about moving away, sadder even than he’d been when they’d left Chicago to come down here in the first place, but there had been a kind of relief, too, the feeling of shaking off something dark and heavy. He hadn’t thought about the reason. He’d just felt the need to do it, like an itch under his skin.

At long last, he pulled himself away from the rail. Now that he was here, he was at a bit of a loss what to do. But it was a warm afternoon, and he felt like something to perk him up after the drive down from Burnstow, so he made up his mind to cross the road and get a Coke or something from what had been Hardy’s convenience store (now a chain). He paused outside, perusing the local ads and fliers in the window, as well as the little nautical knick-knacks for the benefit of the few tourists who passed this way, and it was then that the woman came backing out of the next store. The movement caught his eye automatically, and before he could turn away again, a spark of recognition kicked in.

“Elizabeth?”

She turned his way. Yes, it was Elizabeth. Older, yes, with a few lines about her face and with shorter hair, but still a good-looking woman in middle age, with the same easy, friendly manner that he remembered. She had a few shopping bags in one hand, some parcels gathered in the crook of one arm and a waterproof jacket slung over the other. Seeing him, she paused and peered at his face, clearly recognising him but not quite able to place him.

Feeling suddenly self-conscious, Andy decided to spare her the guessing game. “Sorry, I don’t know if you’ll remember me; it’s been a while. Andy — Andrew Wayne? My mom used to run KAB…”

A nanosecond more, then the recognition dawn in her face, and she broke into a wide smile. “Andy! Oh my God, it _is_ you. Hi!” She made a movement as if to reach forward and hug him, before remembering she was weighed down by the bags and jacket, so she settled for swatting him lightly on the arm.

Andy grinned back. He was unencumbered, so he was free to hug her. “Long time no see, huh?”

“No kidding. Wow.” She studied him, still smiling. “Look at you, all grown up!”

“Tell me about it,” said Andy. “As soon as I came past the first welcome sign, I felt like I’d just aged about fifty years. It’s great to see you again, though. You’re looking well.”

“Yeah, yeah, I am. And how are you? How’s your mom?”

“She’s great, yeah. She’s retired from radio now, but she still keeps busy.”

“Great. So what brings you back here? Are you just passing through, or…?”

Now, after the first pleasure of recognition, he thought he saw a shadow come into her face. Or was the shadow crossing his own mind? A scrap of memory seemed to flash through the space between them: him, pressed up against the wall in the back room of the church, watching helplessly as Elizabeth struggled at the smashed window, while an arm — grey and wasted beneath those rotten bandages, but horribly strong — seized her about the neck…

“I… well, I had some time off work, and I just got it into my mind to come down and see the place again.” The casual words rang hollow in his own ears, so with a sigh, he gave up the whole pretence entirely. “It’s just this time of year. I don’t know, I got to thinking about what happened and wanted to come down, to see…”

Thankfully, Elizabeth didn’t need an explanation. Of course she didn’t.

“Sure,” she said, very quietly. Then the shadow, or whatever it was, passed and she recovered her cheerfulness. “Hey, why don’t you come up to ours for a coffee or something and we can catch up properly? You could even stay for dinner, if you like.”

“Sounds great!” he replied, glad to have something normal to latch onto. “Sure I won’t put you out?”

“No way,” she smiled. “Nick always makes way too much. You’ll be doing us a favour, trust me.”

“All right, then,” said Andy. “Same place?”

“Yep. Tell you what: I’m parked round by Braddock’s. I’ll go put these in the car, come round and meet you here, then we can both drive up.”

“Yes, ma'am. See you in a couple minutes, then.”

So they parted ways, Elizabeth hauling her bags round the corner, while Andy crossed the road again to his own car. But just before he got in, he couldn’t help but stop and look over his shoulder, out beyond the harbour to where the sea stretched away and away towards the horizon.

-

The rest of the day passed with gratifying normality. Nick, once the rigmarole of recognising each other was over, greeted him with the same low-key warmth that Andy remembered. He was ageing steadily into a right old Antonio Bay sea-dog, Andy thought, with the same understated, no-nonsense good nature.

They had the promised coffee, and for a long time all their conversation was about everyday things. What had Andy been up to since they moved away? How was Stevie doing? They grilled him about all the usual things — college, work, relationships — and he filled them in; and they in turn brought him up to speed with what he’d missed here: what was still the same, what had changed, who was still around, who had moved on (or passed on), the changes in the fortunes of the local fishing industry (mostly negative) and Elizabeth’s artwork (extremely positive). It kept them going for hours, but lurking beneath it all was a subtext, an undercurrent; and it was only after dinner was over, once all the dishes had been cleared away and they were sitting about the living room, that Nick was finally the one to cut right to the heart of it:

“So, what _are_ you doing back in Antonio Bay, Andy?”

From the way he said it, from the close, steady way he looked at him, Andy knew it was time to be open. So, setting aside the odd feeling of reluctance that came over him, he said, “It was weird. I had a dream one night, like I was there again, in the back room of the church while _they_ were all trying to get in. I’ve had dreams about it before, every so often, but never quite as real as that. Scared the shit outta me, to tell you the truth! Then when I woke up, I realised it was just gone one a.m, 21st of April.”

Neither Nick nor Elizabeth said anything at that, but he saw the looks on their faces, felt that undercurrent between the three of them tighten: the silent understanding of people who have been through the same experience together.

“After that,” he went on, “I don’t know, I just kept thinking, wondering, until I had to come down and see the place again. Like a compulsion, almost.”

As he finished, he couldn’t help but dart a glance out the window, out towards the sea. Evening was already giving way to night, the sunset reduced to a band of flaming orange and pink just above the horizon, twilight already seeping in, the first stars appearing like cold little pinpricks in the encroaching black. Clear, clear as crystal, the line between sea and sky as sharp as if it had been marked with a razor… but it wasn’t always like that. He’d lived next to this same sea long enough to know she could change her mood in a second.

He turned back from the window, and steeled himself to ask the question he knew he had to ask:

“Has it ever come again, the fog?”

Something — not quite a glance — passed between Elizabeth and Nick, something deadly serious. Then Nick replied, “No. It hasn’t.”

“I think lots of people managed to convince themselves it was some sort of dream or something,” said Elizabeth.

Andy nodded, grimly. He knew the feeling. Sometimes when he thought back to that night, it seemed like a haze had come between him and his memories, as if the fog and the things within it had been no more than a nightmare dreamt up by an imaginative little boy with his head crammed full of Mr. Machen’s ghost stories. But there were other things that stuck in his mind too clearly for doubt. Like the way his mom had screamed his name when they’d driven him out to the lighthouse afterwards, the desperation in the way she’d hugged him to her: the ferocious sort of relief that’s made terrible by the looming shadow of what might have been. Things like that, which belonged indisputably to the real world, making it impossible to disbelieve the rest.

Now, sensing there was more to know, he prompted, “But…?”

Again that same flicker — not a look, more of a mood — before Nick said, “No one talks about it. You’d think it had never happened, but you can tell no one’s really forgotten. And when the foghorn goes off…” He trailed off, shrugging. “There’s a mood, just there below the surface. An awareness.”

“An awareness?” Andy’s throat was suddenly dry.

Nick nodded. “Because we all know — she’s still out there, the _Elizabeth Dane_. No one’ll admit it, but we all know it. We can feel her, just over the horizon somewhere.”

Andy waited, but the expected surprise never came. Instead a completely different feeling settled over him, reached deep inside him to touch whatever unconscious knowledge had already been lying there. The _Elizabeth Dane_ was still out there. He’d known it even before Nick said it. He’d known it even before he came back.

“Has anyone ever seen her? Have you?”

Nick gave a shrug, not quite comfortable. “Not exactly. But there’ve been times when I’ve been out, especially out just past Spivey Point, when the weather turns and the visibility goes to to hell, and I get this feeling, kinda like the one you get when you realise someone’s watching you. And then I know she’s out there, somewhere just out of sight.” Drily, he added: “I don’t stick about after that.”

“And there’ve been other things, too,” said Elizabeth. “Usually on the anniversary of the wreck. The coastguard get all kinds of weird calls. Strange lights, sightings of what looks like an old sailboat in distress out by the Point, but there’s never anything there by the time they get out to look.”

“Boat engines break down for no reason,” Nick went on. “Instruments go haywire. Compasses stop working. Just a couple years ago, me and Freddie Crawford picked up a few kids who’d got themselves lost out by Arkham Reef. They knew their stuff, had all the right equipment and knew how to use it, but as soon as they were out past Lawrence Sands, they said, it all just died on them.”

“Then there were those divers,” added Elizabeth. “The ones who went missing about five or six years ago. They said in town they were going diving off the Point, then they just completely disappeared.”

“Coastguard said anything could’ve happened to them,” said Nick, “though conditions were good, and they were an experienced group. But all the searches came up cold, and they were never found. No bodies, nothing. In the end, all that was ever turned up was a bit of their gear with an old gold coin stuck in it.”

Hearing this, a chill like a trickle of cold seawater went down Andy’s spine. His mind flickered back to that bit of ship’s timber he’d found down on the beach on the day of the fog — the one that had been a gold coin when he’d first seen it. He’d never seen it again after his mom took it. What had she done with it? Got rid of it, thrown it back in the sea? God, he hoped so.

Outside, the light was now just a thin shining ribbon on the edge of the sea, being slowly suffocated by the darkness pressing down on it. Andy looked out, out beyond the rocky arms of the bay, beyond where the waves thrashed themselves into spray against the shoals, and felt the truth of it settle there in some deep place in his soul. She was out there, all right. Just over the horizon, plying back and forth, back and forth across the entrance to the bay, like some old warship blockading an enemy port. He turned back from the window to Nick and Elizabeth, and the knowledge passed between them: the same knowledge that all of Antonio Bay lived with.

“But why?” he asked eventually. “Why’s she still here? Blake got his gold back, didn’t he? And he got his six lives. They never found any trace of Father Malone. I can remember the searches.”

He was only a kid at the time, but he’d been there in the thick of it, and he remembered the adults talking afterwards, piecing together everything they knew. About the grisly truth behind the _Elizabeth Dane_ ’s wrecking, the murders and the theft, about Blake’s thirst for revenge. But he’d had his revenge, so why stay on?

“I don’t know,” said Nick. “Because the ship’s still down there somewhere on the sea bed? Don’t ghosts need a proper burial or something before they can move on?”

“Or maybe,” said Elizabeth, “because the town’s still here.” They both looked at her and she went on, “Father Malone couldn’t give back all the gold, because some of it had already been taken by the others to found the town. This whole place was built up by the murderers; it only exists because of the wreck. Maybe as long as Antonio Bay exists, it’ll always be this way.”

“A sort of curse, then?” said Andy. “Hanging round the town’s neck like the Ancient Mariner’s albatross?”

“I guess so. Something like that.”

After that there was silence, broken by the sound of the sea outside, the rasp of the waves lapping against the sand; a sound like ghostly voices whispering of all the secrets they knew. Both Elizabeth and Nick were subdued, remembering, and Andy wasn’t much better off.

Antonio Bay and the _Elizabeth Dane_ , unwillingly bound up together. Was Elizabeth right? So long as the town existed, were Blake and his men doomed to beat up and down this coast forever, never able to find rest, northern California’s very own _Flying Dutchman_? And if they were, would the town really never be free of them?

Now there was a thought to send the mood plunging straight down to Davy Jones’ Locker.

-

It was after twelve when he finally made tracks, leaving Nick and Elizabeth with the promise not to be a stranger as he got into his car. He had checked into the Montague Arms up in Burnstow, but as soon as he was on the road he was seized by a sudden urge to make a detour, and turned south out of town to follow the road that wound along the cliffs towards Spivey Point. As soon as he’d left behind the last cheerfully lit windows on the outskirts, he was plunged into darkness, and the remote winding road seemed very lonely indeed. There was no one directly ahead or behind him on his lane, and only the occasional car flashing into sight as it came up the other way. He turned on the radio, but somehow the flood of music that flooded the car seemed only to emphasise the loneliness outside, and he ended up shutting it off after less than a minute. So he drove on in silence, the only sound the low growl of his engine and, always, the whisper of the dark sea against the rocks below.

Just before the turn-off to the KAB lighthouse, he found the spot he was looking for and pulled in. But even after he turned off the engine, he sat there for a good few minutes, hands braced on the steering-wheel, second-guessing the whole idea. But the impulse was too insistent to be denied, so he unbuckled his seat-belt and got out.

Away from the shelter of the bay, the wind had a raw, almost wild edge to it. On his left-hand side, a great bulk of protruding rock cut out the lighthouse, but the moon was out, and he could remember the way all right, his feet almost automatically finding the narrow trail that led through the short stretch of grass, over the rocks, then finally down onto the sand.

The beach was dark and empty as he picked his way down to the shore. To the north, the town was only a couple of miles away, but the lights in the darkness seemed as remote as the cold stars. Once upon a time, there would’ve been kids camping out here every other night, and there would have been at least one campfire, glowing like a beacon in the dark. Now there was nothing. Times changed; parents seemed to have become more paranoid than they were in his day. But perhaps the parents of Antonio Bay had better reason than most for not letting their kids down by the sea now.

At last he came to a stop, right on the edge of the shoreline. His feet sank into the wet sand, chilly water gradually seeping through his shoes. The sea hushed and soughed against the sand, each incoming wave straining out for him before falling off at the last moment with a disappointed little murmur. It was a clear night, and a long shining strip of reflected moonlight stretched out across the placid black surface of the water, drawing his eye towards the horizon. But nothing moved out there, nothing but the movement of distant waves against the rocks. There was nothing to see.

Nothing to see… but despite that, there _was_ something out there. He’d felt it as soon as he stepped onto the beach, and as he stood there on the shoreline he felt it even more strongly. Something that rushed in on every wave, making its mark as surely as the ripples left upon wet sand, as sharp and sour as the taste of the salt air on his lips.

Anger. No — more than that: _hatred_. An ugly, festering tangle of emotion, like the sea-wrack below the harbour wall that afternoon. A hatred that had never been satisfied, after all, but had only grown and intensified, out there in the darkness, as vast and fathomless as the ocean itself.

“Christ, Blake,” he murmured aloud. “Why are you still here? Why can’t you just rest?”

Rest; he’d always assumed that’s what Blake had wanted for himself and his crew, more than anything. That’s what all restless souls in ghost stories are really after, isn’t it? Even revenge was just a means to an end, a score to be settled so they could move on. 

But maybe he’d been wrong. He’d definitely wondered, more than once, what good it could do, killing someone like sweet old Mrs. Kobritz. How could you rectify one atrocity by killing innocents who knew nothing about what had happened a hundred years ago?

Maybe, after all, it had never been about finding rest, or reclaiming what had been taken from him, or restoring any sort of great cosmic balance. Maybe for Blake, it had always been about getting his pound of flesh, and never mind whatever came after that. Maybe he was too full of anger to care about anything else. Blake, who had once been a kind man trying to do some good in the world, had been warped into a thing of rage and hatred that would never be pacified.

Well, he thought, he’d come back to Antonio Bay to find out what had become of the _Elizabeth Dane_ after the fog left. He’d found the answer, even if it wasn’t the one he’d hoped for.

Just at that moment, out on the very edge of the horizon, something caught his eye. A shadow, no more, out beyond the Point, just at the limit of his vision. He couldn’t make out the shape from here, but it was there, all right, a patch of solid black that blotted out the star-speckled blackness of the sky.

An offshore wind came shivering over the water towards him, and he shuddered into his coat. All at once he realised how alone he was out here, how exposed, a solitary figure out here in the vast darkness.

He made up his mind to leave, but just as he was turning away, another wave washed up by his foot then receded. He didn’t know what made him look down at that moment, but he did, and even through the darkness he saw that the sea had just left him something. And by the faint glimmering moonlight he could even see what it was.

A gold coin.


End file.
